As shown in FIG. 1, a store 100 is simply a collection of products 120. As shown in FIG. 2, a mall 140, of course, is a collection of stores 100. Historically, consumers 160 could visit the store 100 or the mall (i.e., a bazaar) to haggle with sellers over prices and to share information about products with other consumers (e.g., buyers) and the sellers (sometimes as a technique for demanding a lower price). In the modern era, the consumers 160 have typically had to come to the seller's pre-selected and pre-priced collection of products 120 in order to make a purchase.
An on-line group-buying sale 380, such as that represented in FIG. 3, may turn the point of sale from a collection of products 120 into a collection of consumers 160. The on-line group-buying sale 380 may further allow the consumers 160 to be located among any number of other buying groups in an electronic network (e.g., an Internet site provided by a business entity implementing an on-line group-buying sale). This fundamental shift in structure may provide advantages to both buyers and sellers, some of which an interested reader may find discussed in a related pending, commonly owned application filed on Mar. 15, 1999, entitled “Demand Aggregation Through Online Buying Groups,” U.S. application Ser. No. 09/270,219, and in its corresponding PCT publication WO00/55782 (PCT/US00/03814), the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
By globally aggregating a large number of consumers 160 in one place at one time (a buying group), the on-line group-buying sale 380 may realize a shift in power from the seller of goods and services to the buyers of goods and services. Rather than having the product's seller declare a single static sales price, the on-line group-buying sale 380 may permit each buyer to establish a maximum price at which he or she is willing to purchase the product/service.
Unfortunately, the on-line group-buying sale 380 may not attain its full potential, in some instances, if the seller must purchase and maintain a product inventory prior to initiating an on-line group-buying sale for a given featured item (e.g., a product and/or and service). Inventory maintenance and the uncertainty associated with selling all of a given product in inventory may increase the seller's costs, which are typically passed on to the buyers. In addition, some sellers may be reluctant to host on-line group-buying sales for some featured items if the seller is additionally required to purchase and warehouse a sufficiently large inventory of the featured items prior to the sale's commencement. Sellers may not generally rely upon suppliers (e.g., manufacturers, wholesalers, etc.) to retain a large quantity of a given product on hand, especially if the supplier is continuously depleting inventory due to ongoing shipments associated with other sales.